Are You LinkedIn?
A few years ago, my co-worker Ryan and I were discussing fun business ideas over a sushi lunch. What if there were a way to leverage the connections of our first-degree relationships, for either business or personal reasons? Maybe you could find a new customer, maybe a new girlfriend - and because you could see how you were connected to someone, there wouldn’t be an issue of trusting random people who you met over the Internet.
That conversation took place in January of 2003. In March, someone tipped me off to friendster. D’oh - like so many good ideas, someone had executed quicker than us on this one.
Ah well, they did a great job with it. I’ve been using friendster for years, and it is quite addictive. There are now other social networking sites, notably:
- MySpace: I don’t know too much about this one, but it seems to be popular with high school students
- thefacebook.com: It seems to have surpassed friendster in popularity with college students, because you need to have a valid college email address to access it.
- LinkedIn: The business version of social networking. I’ve been on it for months but only recently started exploring its features and filling out more detailed profile information.
I’m curious if you’re a member of any of these sites and if you’ve made any worthwhile connections from them.
June 7th, 2005 at 5:27 pm
Great post Jon. I remember that conversation well. We even had a little prototype up and running.
Social networking sites are one of those technologies that it is easy to get excited about - it has a high coolness factor. But people have been doing business for centuries with social networks, albeit the "offline" kind. Is there any other way of doing business except through one’s contacts? I can make a warm introduction to someone in my network via a regular e-mail, without the need to have a website mediate. Now on the other hand, SN sites allow you to see who your friends know and that can be very useful.
I think its interesting to watch what Google is doing in this space. On one hand, they have a "classic" SN technology in Orkut. On the other, they have a much more progressive technology in their new acquisition of Dodgeball.com. Orkut is similiar to a Friendster or LinkedIn. I think Google has it so that later, if those other sites really take off, they won’t be late to the party. Dodgeball.com, however, transfers your online network into real life via SMS mobile phone messages. If you are in a cafe, and someone two hops away from you in your network is there as well, it will notify you and you can make a face to face introduction - much more effective, in my opinion.
I wonder if the providers of this technology can make it valuable enough for me to pay $29.95 a month. Personally, to pay that, I’d have to make at least one or two "A-list" contacts every month. I may be demanding too much, however.
I am okay with this idea getting away on us. After all, there’s "revenue" (selling crazy T-shirts online) and *revenue* (Microsoft’s annual booty on Windows). I prefer *revenue* if possible.
June 8th, 2005 at 10:24 am
This brings up an interesting point Ryan. What is an A-list contact to you? Being in the software industry, you probably won’t get as much out of talking to, say, Ralph Lauren as you would Eric Schmidt (google’s CEO). Remember the offshoot of this idea, which was like a way to connect budding entrepreneurs with seasoned mentors?
All jokes aside, the well-run crazy t-shirt companies no doubt have business plans (1: come up with offensive things to write on t-shirts 2: ? 3: profit) and could always avail themselves of someone who knows the garment industry.
Also interesting to hear about Dodgeball.com, although the site seems to be down.
September 7th, 2005 at 12:48 am
Quite frankly, I went to Linkedin.com, and found that it is really nothing more that a fancy way of keeping track of my contacts.
When I first went to the site, I believed that what they could do for me was introduce me to others seeking the types of services I offered, providing a networking system through which I could meet new people, not simply track old friends.
I was pretty dissappointed.
K Knight